


now it's quiet

by lhknox



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Kid Fic, Sad, You will be sad, adoption au, but that is not how it ends, im warning you now, it starts off happy, its sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 19:43:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10860771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lhknox/pseuds/lhknox
Summary: never, not in a million years, did you see jay coming.





	now it's quiet

**Author's Note:**

> sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry

you never thought life could feel like this. you had been alone for so long, too long, and you had resigned yourself to the fact that maybe you’d never find someone who wanted to spend forever in your arms.

and then you found alex. alex, who scared you and surprised you and loved you with a ferocity you’d never seen before. she consumed you, and everything you were, and. you loved her. you loved her so much, more than you thought could ever be possible.

and alex, she fills your life with more people who you admire and slowly grow to love. you gain a sister in kara and a nerdy little brother in winn. you find yourself caught up in a whirlwind bromance with james olsen and you start to turn to j’onn for advice and support.

but never, not in a million years, did you see jay coming. 

jay was a whirlwind and a handful and he landed in your life with enough force to embed him there for good. you and alex had been registered as foster parents for six months, but they still hadn’t placed a child with you. and then -

his mother was dead and his father had been arrested and was being sent to jail for a very long time. he was quiet and inquisitive and he didn’t smile much, but when he did it lit up a whole damn city block. oh, and he was an alien. you think that’s why they placed him with you; you worked for the science division and alex was listed as fbi on all official documents. if anybody could handle an alien kid, it was the two of you.

he doesn’t talk much when they first brought him to your apartment. he was barely four and his hair was a mess of wild curls and his little hand feels so soft in yours. your heart soared every time alex knelt down so she could look him in the eye when she talked, they way he looked nack at her so seriously with his bright brown eyes.

if finding love with alex had caught you off guard, well then jay tumbling into your life was a miracle of biblical proportions, something nobody could’ve ever seen coming. you didn’t know your heart was this big, that it could be overflowing with love for a small rag tag family that was completely and totally yours. 

life took a shift, from being mere moments to full blown memories that you document carefully, wanting to hold onto them forever. you take photos of jay and alex attempting to bake a cake, his dark skin covered in flour. you video the unadulterated joy on his face as kara floated him around the apartment. you watched as he learned how j’onn can read his mind and you laughed at their almost silent conversations, jay thinking his questions and j’onn murmuring back his response. and as he grew older, you watched james show him life through a camera lense, you watched winn show him all the tech gadgets he could.

and you watched your wife fall more and more in love with your son with every passing day, and you yourself fell more and more in love with the both of them, with alex and her gentle nature, with jay and his smile that could save the world.

and jay, he was fearless. well, almost. the kid would leap of buildings if you’d let him, he’d cross oceans to find adventure. and yet, he always slept with a small nightlight, for years. you lost count of the times, a long time ago, the times alex sat up with your son, rocking him to sleep in the dark. you offered to do it when she’d had particularly long days, but alex always insisted.

she said she remembered what it was like, to sit in the dark and wish the stars would come out. to sit and fear the darkness around her. she remembered what it was like to sit with kara when she first got to earth, overwhelmed by her senses and by the newness of everything. and so, she rocked him to sleep too many times to count, the nightlight flickering in the darkness, the warmness in her heart glowing. she wanted to protect him, and you understood her whole heartedly; you’d do anything for that little boy, anything at all.

and then -

it was your fault. you should never have gotten so comfortable, you should never have thought that you could sustain the happiness the universe had given you, never assumed that you deserved it in the first place.

if anything, you were glad it was you who found him and not alex. she didn’t have to see him like that, lying in his own blood, his little body drained of life. it didn’t seem real at first. how could someone so lively, so bright, be gone just like that?

you never thought life could feel like this, like the world was folding in on itself, like your heart had dissolved. pain flowed through every nerve of your body, the blood that pumped through you felt ice cold. as you sat on the couch, with your wife crying in your arms, you remembered a book you had read years and years before.

“Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable.”

the book was wrong, you thought. you had found perfect happiness. you had held perfect happiness in your arms, sung him to sleep and watched him grow into a funny, loving, incredible little boy.

and now, you felt perfect unhappiness, in a world where jay no longer existed.

“how’re we supposed to bury him,” alex whispered to you. her breath smelled of scotch and her cheeks were stained with tears and you couldn’t help but feel even more helpless when you looked at her. “how are we supposed to bury him when he still needs a nightlight?”

a fresh wave of pain hit you, and you just couldn’t catch your breath, because she was right.

“i can’t put him in the dark, mags. i can’t do it. i can’t-”

you tried to calm her down, but there was no use. how could you bury your son deep beneath the earth when he was afraid of the dark?

you waited til she had stopped crying, and then you slowly shuffled to his room. you transcended pain as you stood in the doorway, feeling numb instead as you stepped inside.

you returned to your wife moments later, jay’s nightlight in one hand, his favorite teddy bear clutched tightly in the other. 

“we’ll keep him safe,” you promised, even though you knew you’d already failed at that. you were supposed to keep him safe, and you didn’t.

and he was gone.

and you were still here.

and none of it was fair.

**Author's Note:**

> come scream at me over on tumblr my url is murdershegoat and my brand is Sadness and Stupidity


End file.
